Pete McMartin: A front desk maven retires

Pete McMartin, Vancouver Sun columnist05.01.2013

Betty Penman is retiring after 18 years as receptionist and office manager at Vancouver Glass. Ever pleasant, Betty is testimony to the value of the friendly retail experience, and how rare that can be.Arlen Redekop
/ Vancouver Sun

Betty Penman is retiring after 18 years as receptionist and office manager at Vancouver Glass. Ever pleasant, Betty is testimony to the value of the friendly retail experience, and how rare that can be.Arlen Redekop
/ Vancouver Sun

Betty Penman is retiring after 18 years as receptionist and office manager at Vancouver Glass. Ever pleasant, Betty is testimony to the value of the friendly retail experience, and how rare that can be.Arlen Redekop
/ Vancouver Sun

Betty Penman is retiring after 18 years as receptionist and office manager at Vancouver Glass. Ever pleasant, Betty is testimony to the value of the friendly retail experience, and how rare that can be.Arlen Redekop
/ Vancouver Sun

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Recently, Frances Bula — terrific reporter, city affairs blogger and chair of the Langara journalism department — needed some glass work done on her home.

She phoned Vancouver Glass Ltd., on the corner of East Hastings and Commercial. She had used them several times in the past, but the last time she had phoned was four or five years ago.

She got Betty Penman on the line. Betty was the receptionist and office manager. Frances, who had never met Betty, said hi, but before she could identify herself, Betty said:

“Oh, Frances, how are you? What’s the problem now?”

Frances thought perhaps Betty had recognized her voice from the radio. Frances often does radio interviews.

But Betty said, no, she just recognized her voice from the last time she called — four or five years ago. Frances was agog. When she mentioned Betty’s feat of memory to the repairman who later came to her house, he told Frances:

“Yah, she’s amazing and she’s going to retire soon, and it’ll be hard to replace her.”

This — in a time when so much of customer service can be a frustrating experience — was a remarkable endorsement. How many employees on the front lines of retail inspire admiration? How often do we hear about it?

So we visited Betty on Wednesday. She was there at the front desk, manning the phones. She said she probably takes about 100 calls a day, and yes, she said, she remembers a lot of customers just by their voices.

“I have at least 50 regular customers,” Betty said, “who never identify themselves on the phone and I know who they are.”

She is 70. She retires in June. She has been with Vancouver Glass for the last 18 years, and she has been in retail, in various capacities, for most of her working life. This included a stint as a regional manager with Marks & Spencer. Her duties included training sales staff.

“I’d just tell them to acknowledge the customer in a friendly, nice way. Give them a little space — because there’s nothing I hate worse than commissioned sales people that stand on your head — observe what they’re doing and, when you think it’s appropriate, go over and ask them if you can give them a hand with anything.”

Her experiences on both sides of the cash register informed her work. Like us all, she hates retail clerks more enthralled in listening to a colleague’s weekend adventure than ringing up a purchase.

Yet she’s sympathetic to sales people. She can understand their own frustrations.

“The problem is, (sales people) are not being paid enough, so they’re not taking as much pride in their jobs as they would be, I don’t believe, if they felt a little more valued. They feel undervalued, and clients undervalue them, too — very much so.”

She came to Vancouver Glass after her daughter, Beverley, asked her to join the company. Beverley’s partner, Mike Peterson, had just started up the business. His receptionist had quit and the office needed organizing. He was, Betty said, “working 16-hour days and into an early grave.”

She left her job as manager of a clothing store. She knew nothing about the glass business. She soon proved her worth.

“I wish she were 20 years younger,” Peterson said. “That way, she’d still be working here.

“We hear a lot about her from customers: Whenever she goes on vacation or she’s not around, they ask about her.”

She’s friends with many of them. A lot of her customers are cabinet makers and artists, and she has made a point of going to gallery openings when they exhibit.

“I take the time to do it because I really enjoy it.

“I love people and that’s the basic reason I worked past 65. It wasn’t economics. It was because I enjoy being here and I enjoy the staff and I’m really going to miss my clients.”

In the last few days before she retires, Betty said, she will get on the phone and call each of her clients and thank them for their years of business. Several of those clients have already asked her to work for them as a volunteer. Before moving to Vancouver from Ashcroft, Betty volunteered in charities two or three times a week. That was one of the reasons she was retiring, she said: she wanted to start volunteering again.

She was asked if she has had her share of bad customers.

“Oh, definitely. But you just think about the next nice customer you’re going to have. Because you know what? The nice ones outweigh the bad ones by a long way. For every rude customer I’ve had in here, I’ve had hundreds of nice ones. You treat them well, and you just give them a smile and say, ‘How are you doing today?’ And when they say, ‘Do you really care?’ I’ll say, ‘Yah, I really do care.’”

Strange that such common decency should seem so uncommon. But that, Betty said, should be the everyday traffic between customer and clerk.

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Pete McMartin: A front desk maven retires

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